The recent announcement by the High Commissioner of a sweeping post-war reconstruction plan for Palestine is being utilized by almost the entire Arab press in Palestine as a springboard from which to launch demands for immediate enforcement of the White Paper of 1939, which provides for the termination of Jewish immigration to Palestine in the Spring of 1944, The Arab papers also ask the immediate establishment of an agency to speed the reconstruction forecast in the High Commissioner’s address.

Supporting the White Paper, which it bitterly opposed on its issuance in 1939, the newspaper Falastin, one of the leading Arab organs, cites the recent assertion by Sir Ronald Storrs, former Governor General of Jerusalem, that the younger Arab generation is more moderate than the older, as an argument for British-Arab rapprochement. “Common British and Arab interests require that the present opportunity not be lost,” Falastin writes.

“Is not the British Government’s reluctance to enforce the White Paper immediately, designed to push Arabic youth to extremes?” Falastin adds. “The British statesmen and press have previously complained that the Arab extremists are stubborn. Now the Arabs have changed.”

Sir Ronald’s recent warning that armed conflict may break out between Jews and Arabs in Palestine is echoed not only by the Arab and Hebrew press here, but by informed Arab and Jewish laymen. The only new factor in the situation is that these hints of forthcoming conflict have begun to appear in the press.